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Kell gave a reluctant nod. “Fewer reports. Sounds good.” He moved back to his cockpit door. “I’m doing him a favor, you know that?”

The mechanic’s partner, already struggling to pull the unconscious man upright, said, “Yeah, sure.” He could not have sounded less interested.

A moment later Plague Group’s maintenance skimmer was once again in motion.

Tyria asked, “Are you all right?”

“I want Phanan to tape me up as soon as possible. But I don’t think it’s anything serious. As long as I don’t do too much bending.”

“Well, you bought us the time we needed.”

Kell checked his chrono. Just give us thirty minutes, he thought. Then, it won’t matter how many reports they call in.

Runt’s attack came with such swiftness that even the Wraiths, who’d timed his arrival nearly to the last second, were caught off guard by it.

His X-wing was suddenly over the spaceport, its engines screaming like some mythical demon, its laser cannons blasting at unoccupied portions of duracrete. Men and women on the field ran in the direction of any cover. Some ran to dive into the shadow of refueling tanks. Wedge shook his head as he watched them.

A moment later the shrill keen of an Imperial air-raid alert filled the air. Bunkers all over the spaceport went dark as their occupants or central computers obeyed emergency blackout procedures.

Runt passed over the field, then turned around for another run. His lasers targeted a luggage skimmer and ignited its fuel cell, blowing bags and cases over a fifty-meter radius.

Wedge dimly heard a grinding alarm noise from below. Then the bunker’s top door motors whined and the doors began to retract.

He peered through the crack between them. He could see tiny lights below him: green, red, yellow, white, the myriad glows associated with computer gear. But the little TIE fighter hangar was otherwise dark, its occupants also observing normal blackout procedures.

As he’d expected. As he’d counted on.

He moved with the leading edge of the door. As soon as the doors were locked open, he placed his grappling hook where the door edge met the duracrete roof. A few meters over, Falynn would be doing the same at the other door.

With a chilling engine roar Wedge would always associate with the Empire, two of the TIE fighters below lit up their engines, silhouetting themselves with ionic engine wash, and then leaped up into the sky, not bothering with repulsorlifts for initial takeoff.

Wedge gripped the rope attached to his hook and rolled over into the darkness.

Before Runt could make his third pass over the spaceport, a circular slab of duracrete sixty meters from the Narra rose from the ground. Beneath it was a ball-shaped gun emplacement, an open-air metal framework with a gunner’s chair and a hemispherical durasteel shield from which protruded four linked laser cannons. The rig rose on a metal column, ten meters into the air, fifteen meters, then rotated to track Runt’s X-wing.

Kell, at the pilot’s seat of the Narra, swore and hit his comm. “Six, we have a ground emplacement setting up for your return. Leader reports the roof opening; you’re about to have company.” He flipped the switch to light up the shuttle’s engines and guns.

“We copy, Five.” Runt’s X-wing heeled over and headed west.

“If you do that,” Janson said, “we’re going to have to scramble out of here without our TIE fighter support.”

“What do you recommend? We sit back and watch them flame Runt?” All the shuttle’s occupants heard the roar of the TIE fighters leaving their bunker. “Since that emplacement is taller than the trees, Runt’s going to be within its line of sight for a couple of klicks at least—”

Janson shook his head. “Trust your squadmates, Kell.”

As if to punctuate his words, a brilliant needle of laser energy leaped from the top of the spaceport’s main terminal building and hit the gun emplacement. Kell saw the laser burn through the chair, through the gunner’s body. The gunner slumped and the emplacement continued its rotation, no longer tracking a target.

“Donos,” Kell